One half of our croft is brimming with flouncing lambs and proud, sometimes panicked mums, but the other looks something like a Hollywood care home for fallen Divas. At this time of year Shetland sheep teenagers (hoggs), start to lose their winter locks, often leaving them with just a boa style ruff around their fairly…

I remember in college, with dissertation looming large, the back of the oven and the sticky bit under the fridge became vital preoccupations. So did eating chocolate and smoking rollies. Today’s “dissertation” is Search Engine Optimisation, otherwise known as SEO. For those who have managed to avoid the dreary art of marketing online, it is…

A mysterious lull in orders has given me the opportunity to revamp the ailing hen shelter with an extra course of living willow. This is all in a bid to lure them out of the vegetable garden where they have been strutting and fluffing and dusting to their hearts’ content, eating slug eggs and pecking…

Just returned from a mid field, blizzard buffeted hoof clinic. Hands now mottled with iodine yellow and blue from the cold, but at least Ruby’s painful foot has been trimmed and dosed and will revert to smelling earthy and normal again rather than like halitosis. I must tell you about my new toy, on loan…

I have been pondering more abstract lampshades, roughly landscape lampshades but more about light and texture than hills and glens. However, I keep being distracted by birds and strange animals. I believe it is time to out my latent cravings and get chaotic. This afternoon’s walk to clear my head of product listing madness also…

…would be a great name for a story book! The merchandise has just been made and was inspired by my friend over the hill – Hazel, who suggested the combo in an FB comment. You often see birds settled on sheep backs. I suppose it’s a handy vantage point with the added bonus of warm…

An early start and a mucky, late evening gathering and preparing the hoggets for their final and only journey off the croft to the slaughterhouse on Mull. We can only hope that their year and three quarters of herb rich, mineral licking, island roaming has been good for them and that their end will be…